Mojahedin Khalq (MKO, MEK, Rajavi cult) contact arrested in Lebanon charged with spying for Israel

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... has been detained in south Lebanon on suspicion of collaborating with Israel. The official said Tuesday that Mohammad Ali al-Husseini was detained Saturday. He says the cleric will be referred to military court if the charges are confirmed. He spoke on condition of anonymity in line with regulations. Lebanon and Israel technically remain at war, and more than 100 people have been arrested in Lebanon since 2009 on suspicion of spying. The detention marks a rare instance of a clergyman's suspected involvement in a spying case. Al-Husseini is ...

(Rajavi from Saddam to AIPAC)

Associated Press, May 25, 2011
http://www.ap.org/

Lebanese cleric detained for alleged spying

BEIRUT (AP) — A security official says a Shiite Muslim clergyman and scholar has been detained in south Lebanon on suspicion of collaborating with Israel.

The official said Tuesday that Mohammad Ali al-Husseini was detained Saturday. He says the cleric will be referred to military court if the charges are confirmed. He spoke on condition of anonymity in line with regulations.

Lebanon and Israel technically remain at war, and more than 100 people have been arrested in Lebanon since 2009 on suspicion of spying.

The detention marks a rare instance of a clergyman's suspected involvement in a spying case. Al-Husseini is known to be against Hezbollah, the Shiite militant group that fought a war with Israel in 2006.

and who is Mohammad Ali al-Husseini?
http://www.iran-interlink.org/index.php?mod=view&id=7128

Lebanese "fake sheikh" and the Washington backed Mojahedin Khalq terrorists

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Habilian Association, October 25, 2009
http://www.habilian.com/view-en.asp?ID=04648

The Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO), a terrorist cult responsible for tens of thousands deaths in Iran and Iraq, is so isolated that is enjoying supports by an isolated Lebanese sheikh who calls himself an Allamah (a title given to a very knowledgeable Muslim scholar) and claims to win a high support throughout the Arab world. Habilian Association first reveals details of the personality and activities of Sayyid Muhammad Ali Husseini Lubnani, a young Lebanese "fake sheik" and a great supporter of the Saudi royal system.

(Leader of Washington backed Terrorist with Saddam Hussein)

Life and education

Sayyid Muhammad Ali Husseini Lubnani, from Al-Shumaysat, Lebanon, was ostracized by the family due to his unsuitable behaviour. He spent a few years in Qom, Iran to continue his Islamic studies before being expelled from Iran due to his deviations from true Islamic ideology. His education can be marked only by low ability of learning and his numerous plagiarized writings. He kept plagiarism until 2006 when his books on Islam included several parts of downloaded material!

He always complains about his stay in Iran and, as it is said by a Shia from Jabal Amil, Lebanon, this is due to his great wrath at his expulsion. Therefore, he tries to unite any anti-Iran groups, including Saad Hariri's Future Movement (Al-Mustaqbal). In his first meeting with Hariri, the Lebanese sheikh suggested him to establish a joint organization dedicated to counter what he called an "Iranian Shiism". Hariri accepted the suggestion and gave him a 35-thousand grant as a start.

Expelled by Hezbollah

Not familiar to many Lebanese people, Muhammad Ali also has a background of joining Hezbollah for a while, but he was expelled by Sayyid Hassan Nasrollah, the party's secretary general in person due to his same ideological deviations.

Though keeping countering Hezbollah, the 34-year-old man knows his "Arab-Islamic Council" a good alternative to the popular Hezbollah.

Through his frequent visits to European and Arab countries, Muhammad Ali tries to make himself popular as a supporter to the poor. He is accused of a big fraud by pretending he was gathering contributions to the poor while in his visits to the Persian Gulf Arab countries. He could manage to make such visits thanks to his frauds.

Supporting a terrorist cult

Lubnani claims he had survived an assassination attempt in Tyre Road, Lebanon in 2007, following which he issued a statement condemning Iran. He has issued several statements against Iran and supporting the MKO.

He refers to Maryam Rajavi, MKO leader's wife, as "the Iranian president". There is a link on his website covering Iran's post-election events and including all MKO's statements in this regard.

In a March 2006 interview with Al-Siyasah website, the Lebanese sheikh claimed he had a good relationship with Hezbollah. However he remained silent when asked how he could claim that while having good relations with the anti-Iran MKO.

Pro-MKO comments

The Lebanese so-called leader has condemned Iran and supported the MKO several times through interviews and official statements, though the cult is regarded as a terrorist organization by the US Department of State and many human rights organizations. Here is a brief report of his comments in a chronological order.

March 2008: Lubnani urged Iraqi president Jalal Talabani in a statement to apologize for what he had said on the MKO.

April 2008: In an interview with the Kuwaiti Al-Watan newspaper, he claimed Iran was cooperating with Hezbollah to launch a new war.

May 2008: In a letter to Mryam Rajavi, he appreciated her fighting against Iranian regime.

May 2008: Following the removal of MKO from UK's terror list, he sent a telegraph to Maryam Rajavi to congratulate her on behalf of the Lebanese nation.

July 10, 2008: "The presence of our brothers in Ashraf City (how he calls Camp Ashraf) is justified by moral, religious, ethnic, Arab, human and international criteria, since they are expelled from their country and are staying in Iraq inevitably", he said in an interview with the Iraqi Al-Sumeriyyah TV along with Muhammad al-Daini, former Iraqi Pro-Baath MP recently arrested in Malaysia on charge of terror efforts including bombing Iraqi parliament. "The Iraqi government has no evidences against these people", he added condemning Iraq for what he called their strict behaviour with regards to the MKO.

July 2008: "Iran doesn't fear the US missiles, but it fears the truth spread from Camp Ashraf by its knowledgeable residents. In fact, Ashraf is the true enemy to Iran's hypocrisy, since it represents the Iranian nation's true view points. We do believe that Uk's excluding MKO from its terror list is an interpretation of the Quranic ayah saying, 'the truth has come and the falsehood has vanished away'", he said on Camp Ashraf.

October 3, 2008: "Ashraf residents represent truth and the Iranian nation. They are Iran's children and are like the early Muslims who immigrated to Abyssinia (the then Ethiopia). Following a full research, we in the Arab-Islamic Council found out that it is our human, religious and legal duty to urge the world and the UN as well as high religious figures to stand by this oppressed group", he said in a statement.

It was on October 7, 2008 that he issued two statements in a day supporting MKO. The MKO notorious terrorists have frequently stated his comments on their websites.

Most recently, he showed his sympathy with the MKO by starting "The Arab-Islamic Committee in Defense of Ashraf". In a press conference on October 21, 2009, Lubnani insisted again on his support to Ashraf residents, urging Iraq to respect international, human, moral and religious criteria and stop what he called aggression against the refugees. He also urged the US, EU and UN to make any efforts to ensure Ashraf residents' health and security.

Assassination attempts fancy

The angry young man has made many efforts to provoke Arab leaders against Iran. He has always fancied he had been under assassination attempts by Iran. He said he had got flat tyres and barricades in his house car park to prove his assassination claims!

Love for Saudi regime

The Lebanese sheikh wrote a book on the Saudi Arabia showing his great love for the kingdom. In "The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and its Role in Lebanon", he admires the Saudi Wahhabis and their great role in what he calls establishing peace in Lebanon. He refers to the Saudi Arabia as "a kind father and brother" in the book.

Mr Peace!

Though calling himself "Mr Peace", he is so notorious for his lies that some Arab states decreased their support to him. He has turned to Qatar following the Saudi had government decided to decrease contributions to him.

He has cursed the Sunni caliphs in his books though he claims to be a full supporter of Shia-Sunni unity. This can be traced in "The Tears of the Righteous on the Grieves of the Father of the Noble", pages 11, 12, 43 and 44, though he amended these parts in later editions.

War games with a few people!

Lubnani claims to do several war games with his troops. Interestingly enough, the war games are held with only a few people. This can be traced in photos and videos available on his website. The troops are the same board members of his Council, where he is much interested in having women.

No interview with Habilian

Several efforts by Habilian Association (families of over 16000 terror victims) to interview the Lebanese sheikh failed due to his rejection to answer questions on his supporting the MKO.

(Massoud and Maryam Rajavi the cult leaders)

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Also
http://iran-interlink.org/?mod=view&id=11087

For Obscure Iranian Exile Group, Broad Support in U.S.

(Washington backed Mojahedin Khalq, MKO, MEK, Rajavi cult)

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... Ali Safavi, who runs a pro-M.E.K. group in Washington called Near East Policy Research, says the money comes from wealthy Iranian expatriates in the United States and Europe. Because “material support” to a designated terrorist group is a crime, advocates insist that the money goes only to sympathizers and not to the M.E.K. itself. Congress has taken note of the campaign. A House resolution for dropping the terrorist listing has 97 co-sponsors, including the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Mike Rogers, Republican of Michigan ...

Scott Shane, New York Times, November 27 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/27/us/politics/lobbying-support-for-iranian-exile-group-crosses-party-lines.html?_r=1&pagewanted=2

WASHINGTON — At a time of partisan gridlock in the capital, one obscure cause has drawn a stellar list of supporters from both parties and the last two administrations, including a dozen former top national security officials.

That alone would be unusual. What makes it astonishing is the object of their attention: a fringe Iranian opposition group, long an ally of Saddam Hussein, that is designated as a terrorist organization under United States law and described by State Department officials as a repressive cult despised by most Iranians and Iraqis.

The extraordinary lobbying effort to reverse the terrorist designation of the group, the Mujahedeen Khalq, or People’s Mujahedeen, has won the support of two former C.I.A. directors, R. James Woolsey and Porter J. Goss; a former F.B.I. director, Louis J. Freeh; a former attorney general, Michael B. Mukasey; President George W. Bush’s first homeland security chief, Tom Ridge; President Obama’s first national security adviser, Gen. James L. Jones; big-name Republicans like the former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani and Democrats like the former Vermont governor Howard Dean; and even the former top counterterrorism official of the State Department, Dell L. Dailey, who argued unsuccessfully for ending the terrorist label while in office.

The American advocates have been well paid, hired through their speaking agencies and collecting fees of $10,000 to $50,000 for speeches on behalf of the Iranian group. Some have been flown to Paris, Berlin and Brussels for appearances.

But they insist that their motive is humanitarian — to protect and resettle about 3,400 members of the group, known as the M.E.K., now confined in a camp in Iraq. They say the terrorist label, which dates to 1997 and then reflected decades of violence that included the killing of some Americans in the 1970s, is now outdated, unjustified and dangerous.

Emotions are running high as Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton completes a review of the terrorist designation. The government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki of Iraq has said it plans to close the camp, Camp Ashraf, by Dec. 31 and move the people elsewhere in Iraq in order to reassert Iraqi sovereignty over the land where it is located, 40 miles north of Baghdad.

Two earlier incursions by Iraqi troops into Camp Ashraf led to bloody confrontations, with 11 residents killed in July 2009 and at least 34 in April of this year. The M.E.K. and its American supporters say that they believe the Maliki government, with close ties to Iran, may soon carry out a mass slaughter on the pretext of regaining control of the camp.

If that happens, the supporters say, the United States — which disarmed the M.E.K. and guaranteed the security of the camp after the invasion of Iraq — will bear responsibility.

“We made a promise,” said Mr. Ridge, a former congressman and governor of Pennsylvania. “Our credibility is on the line. They’ve been attacked twice. How can we possibly accept assurances from the Maliki government?”

Mr. Ridge suggested that the M.E.K.’s implacable hostility to the rulers of Iran should be a point in their favor.

“In my view, if you’re a threat to Ahmadinejad,” — Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran’s president — “well, the enemy of my enemy is my friend,” Mr. Ridge said. He noted that the M.E.K. had provided information on Iran’s nuclear program during the Bush administration.

The M.E.K. advocacy campaign has included full-page newspaper advertisements identifying the group as “Iran’s Main Opposition” — an absurd distortion in the view of most Iran specialists; leaders of Iran’s broad opposition, known as the Green Movement, have denounced the group. The M.E.K. has hired high-priced lobbyists like the Washington firm Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld. Its lawyers in Europe won a long fight to persuade the European Union to drop its own listing of the M.E.K. as a terrorist group in 2009.

The group’s spending, certainly in the millions of dollars, has inevitably raised questions about funding sources.

Ali Safavi, who runs a pro-M.E.K. group in Washington called Near East Policy Research, says the money comes from wealthy Iranian expatriates in the United States and Europe. Because “material support” to a designated terrorist group is a crime, advocates insist that the money goes only to sympathizers and not to the M.E.K. itself.

Daniel Zucker, Maryam Rajavi and ALi Safavi

Congress has taken note of the campaign. A House resolution for dropping the terrorist listing has 97 co-sponsors, including the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Mike Rogers, Republican of Michigan. At a hearing this month, senators pressed the defense secretary, Leon E. Panetta, about the threat to Camp Ashraf.

A State Department spokesman, Mark Toner, said officials there were “working as quickly as possible” to complete a review of the M.E.K.’s terrorist designation. American officials are supporting an effort by the United Nations to resettle Camp Ashraf residents voluntarily to other countries, a process that is making slow progress.

Other State Department officials, addressing the issue on the condition of anonymity because it is still under deliberation, said that they did believe the 3,400 residents of Camp Ashraf were in danger as the Dec. 31 deadline approaches.

“We’re in constant talks with the Iraqis and the Ashraf leadership to show maximum flexibility on the closure of the camp,” one official said.

But the officials expressed frustration at what they described as the American supporters’ credulous acceptance of the M.E.K.’s claims of representing the Iranian opposition and of embracing democratic values.

In years of observation, the official said, Americans have seen that the camp’s leaders “exert total control over the lives of Ashraf’s residents, much like we would see in a totalitarian cult,” requiring fawning devotion to the M.E.K.’s leaders, Maryam Rajavi, who lives in France, and her husband, Massoud, whose whereabouts are unknown.

Moreover, the official said, the group is “hated almost universally by the Iranian population,” in part for siding with Mr. Hussein in the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s. A State Department cable this year concluded that any indication of United States support for the M.E.K. “would fuel anti-American sentiment” in Iran and would “likely empower Iranian hardliners.”

In Iraq, the M.E.K. is also widely despised, especially by the country’s Shiite majority, because it is accused of helping the Iraqi dictator crush a Shiite revolt in 1991 — a charge the group denies. Because of deep Iraqi hostility, American officials argue that merely dropping the terrorist designation would not end the danger of attacks on the group.

While the M.E.K. carried out a campaign of attacks from the 1970s to the 1990s, mostly targeting Iranian officials, supporters say it has renounced violence and has not engaged in terrorist acts for a decade. The designation law, however, allows Mrs. Clinton to keep the label for a group that “retains the capability and intent to engage in terrorist activity or terrorism.”

Such a decision would outrage the American advocates of reversing the terrorist label.

Mr. Dean, chairman of the Democratic National Committee from 2005 to 2009, said the administration’s failure to act decisively threatened a “humanitarian catastrophe.” Mr. Mukasey said he did not believe the claim that the M.E.K. was a cult, but even if true, it was no reason to keep the terrorist listing. “These people are sitting in the camp, completely harmless,” he said.

Like other advocates, Mr. Mukasey said he had been paid his standard speaking fee — $15,000 to $20,000, according to the Web site of his speakers’ agency — to talk at M.E.K.-related events. But he insisted that the money was not a factor for him or other former officials who had taken up the cause. “There’s no way I would compromise my standing by expressing views I don’t believe in,” he said.